The Travel Office has been doing research on the geographic placement of toxic ash - from waste incinerators - and came across this initiative, called "Return to Sender", to bring ash back to Philadelphia from Haiti where it was dumped in 1988.
The Ash left Haiti in April of 2000, followed by an attempt to dump it on the Cherokee Nation, then an extended vacation off of the coast of Florida before being incinerated, yet again.
The continuing of colonization through waste - or what some call "waste imperialism".
1 comment:
Great post, Ryan. I hadn't imagined the Philly Ash story in relation to toxic tourism before...even though I was struck by it at the time, along with the the Morbo 4000 garbage barge from NYC, which also sailed the seas trying to place waste elsewhere (the one that was photographed with the famous Greenpeace banner, "Next time, try recycling").
I thought you and your readers might be interested in a related story about the dilemma our ongoing production of waste proposes in relation to toxic tourism. Shailendra Yashwant claims his “personal peak as a toxic tourist” was atop a small mountain of garbage in the Smoky Valley of the Philippines. More on the story is available at:
http://www.infochangeindia.org/toxictours08.jsp
Post a Comment